


Fan-tasmal

by Lynse



Category: Danny Phantom, Dude That's My Ghost!
Genre: Crossover, Don’t copy to another site, Gen, Ghosts, One Shot, Shenanigans, specifically ecto shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynse/pseuds/Lynse
Summary: Danny is sick of falling through portals to places unknown. Billy, on the other hand, is delighted that he has another fan who can see him–-even if said fan isn’t as adoring as he should be.





	Fan-tasmal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolfsongRoar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfsongRoar/gifts).



> Set sometime in season 1 for Dude, That's My Ghost (because I have only seen some episodes and only from that season) and late season 3 (post-Urban Jungle) for Danny Phantom. Written as a thank you fic for WolfsongRoar.

The impact knocked the breath from his body. Danny barely had time to get his wits together and look up before the portal he’d fallen through ( _been thrown through_ ) closed above him. He groaned and lay his head back down in the crater he’d made in the asphalt.

Sometimes, he really hated natural portals.

At least he was resilient. Nothing broken. He probably wouldn’t even be bruised when he changed back.

…which, considering this wasn’t Amity Park and ghosts weren’t the norm, he should do sooner rather than later. He didn’t want to accidentally terrify anyone while he tried to find out where he was. Besides, if he managed to get a message to Wulf or call Cujo to him so he could get back home through the Ghost Zone, they’d come to him whether he was Phantom or Fenton.

“I need to get out of here,” Danny muttered, getting to his feet with a wince. He was going to be sore for a while, but he was used to that now. 

He’d crashed into the middle of the street (of course), but he didn’t have to look far to know his instinct had been right. Wherever he was, it wasn’t Amity Park. Amity Park didn’t have palm trees. Or buildings so fancy they had to be surrounded by a tall stone fence. (Okay, so Vlad’s mansion had had one once, but he hadn’t rebuilt it after the first time Danny had destroyed it.) On the upside, it looked like the right dimension _and_ the right season, judging by the green grass and sunny skies, so at least the portal hadn’t spit him out into a different realm or time. Probably.

First things first. He needed to figure out where he was. Then, he could figure out the best way to get home. The coast was clear, so he changed back and flicked intangible to get off the last of the asphalt dust. He’d probably still stand out like a sore thumb in jeans and a t-shirt in a neighbourhood as rich as this one obviously was, but normal clothes were still less conspicuous than HAZMAT suits. 

Danny started walking down the street, trying not to look around too much or otherwise draw attention to himself if anyone walked by. He had to pass a town sign at some point.

-|-

Spencer was glad when his phone started to ring. He was trying to come up with a new idea for a movie, and all Billy kept pitching was something that inevitably starred him. “C’mon, bro-man! I’ll play the invisible man and rescue all the ladies!”

“Just…hold that thought.” Spencer grabbed his cell phone and glanced at the display before answering. “What’s up, Rajeev?”

_“Dude, was that you and Billy just now? I thought you weren’t going to start without me!”_

“Was…what? What are you talking about?”

_“The thing that fell from the sky! You shooting an alien horror movie this time?”_

“The what? What thing?”

_“By the school! Was that seriously not you?”_

“Uh, no.” Alien horror movie sounded good, though. He could work with that. “Let’s go check it out. I’ll just—”

_“Already on my way, dude. You and Billy should get a move on. I think that’s the news truck pulling up.”_

Spencer blinked, but Rajeev had hung up before he could ask for any more details. “Something weird’s going down at the school,” he said.

Billy’s form twisted. When it settled, he was wearing a deerstalker and holding a giant magnifying glass. “I love a good mystery!”

Spencer rolled his eyes and grabbed his video camera, not willing to miss this opportunity if there was a good story to be captured. “Let’s just see what’s going on first.”

-|-

Danny ducked into an alley, trying to figure out what to do. People had noticed. Quickly. More quickly than he was used to, but then again, everyone in Amity Park was used to this being a near-daily occurrence. Besides road closure announcements, the scene of a ghost fight didn’t make the news after the ghosts were gone unless people were trying to rally to make Ghost Insurance a thing. (It would never be a thing. Nobody who needed it would be able to afford the premiums. Even _he_ knew that.)

Considering how his day was going, if he showed up at the scene of the crime, he’d be accused of causing it. They wouldn’t be wrong about that, since he had, but it would definitely be inconvenient, even if he’d have no trouble phasing out of whatever holding cell they stuck him in until they could contact his parents. Of course, walking _away_ from the place everyone seemed to be flocking to would raise major flags, too. 

He could go invisible for now.

He couldn’t stay invisible until he got back home.

Danny stuck his head around the corner, looking back the way he’d come and trying to figure out what the best option was. Stay invisible for an hour and then pretend to be an out-of-town visitor? Give up and try to fly to the next town over, even though he didn’t know which was the best direction to go? Try to find whatever passed as the tourist centre for this place and steal a map? (He’d pay for it, but he didn’t actually have any money on him. It’s not like he’d _expected_ to wind up in the middle of nowhere—or, rather, the middle of somewhere that wasn’t home. Or somehow connected to Vlad.)

“Hey, Spencer, what’s up with the dye job? Your mom force you to try out all her second-rate hair products?”

_What?_ Danny turned, and the tittering group of girls fell silent. “Uh….”

The blonde girl in the middle sniffed. “Who are you?” She was the one who’d spoken before. He had a feeling she’d wanted to add an insult to her words now, but he knew that look. She wasn’t sure she could afford to, not until she knew it wouldn’t be a mistake.

Which begged the question of who she thought he might really be. It’s not like he was remotely intimidating as Fenton. (He wasn’t particularly intimidating as Phantom, either, but his reputation spoke for itself.) 

The girl rolled her eyes when he didn’t answer right away and waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “Oh, whatever, you’re not going to be important if you’re skulking in an alley.” She turned and swept off down the street, toward the gathering crowd, her entourage trailing behind her.

An older man in some wannabe secret service getup watched Danny for a moment longer before following. Danny hadn’t even noticed him until he’d moved, too busy staring after the girls and trying to figure out if he needed to worry about them. But bodyguard guy? He’d probably just committed Danny’s face to memory. The girls might forget about him, but this guy wouldn’t. Especially when it came to the search for the perpetrator. 

He’d been in an alley.

That _screamed_ suspicious person.

What had he been thinking?

“I better make sure I don’t need to do some damage control,” Danny muttered. He didn’t bother going ghost before turning invisible; he didn’t plan to stick around for long. He just wanted to get close enough to see if he needed to deal with anything before he split.

-|-

Billy kept up a running commentary all the way to the school (it was his job to keep Spencer entertained and act as his muse, since all his best movie ideas came from Billy) and dropped him off around the corner so no one would get suspicious. Spencer ran to catch up to his friends—Rajeev and Shanilla were already there—and Billy waved to them before zipping over to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss was about a hole in the road.

That was boring.

Why were they here?

The police were trying to push the crowd back so they could cordon off the area, but still. Boring. It was a crater. No big deal. He could make _plenty_ of craters.

“Nothing interesting here,” he announced as he floated down to join Spencer and the others. “It’s just a hole.”

“A crater,” corrected Shanilla. “Caused by an object falling from the sky that they haven’t located.”

“So someone ran off with it. Who cares?”

“Or it broke apart on impact into a million little pieces that we’re breathing in and the alien dust is going to kill us all!” Rajeev chimed in.

Shanilla sighed and kept filling Spencer in. “There’s no telling when they’ll release an official statement, but the police chief did say we shouldn’t worry about this becoming a regular occurrence. Most space debris burns up before it ever reaches the surface.”

Spencer blinked. “You really think something fell from _space_?”

Rajeev grinned. “Where else would it fall from?”

Spencer glanced at Billy. “What?” he said indignantly. “This isn’t me! Not everything that happens is because of me! Only the good stuff.”

“And all the ecto-contamination,” Spencer muttered, but he couldn’t properly respond to Billy anymore than the others could, not when they were in a crowd like this where everyone was straining to hear—

Wait.

Billy squinted, peering across to the edge of the crowd on the other side of the street.

That kid was definitely looking at him.

Well, maybe just at Spencer, Shanilla, and Rajeev. Billy grinned and waved just in case. The boy paled but raised his hand in return. Ha! Awesome! The new kid was a Cobra fan! _And_ properly intimidated by the idea of meeting his idol. Well, of course he’d be a fan, he had style like Spencer did, and only the stylish had something of the Cobra’s.

Billy did the natural thing: he flew over to introduce himself. Not that he needed the introduction, but he’d do anything for his fans. They liked all the introductions and hand shaking and signed paraphernalia. Billy grabbed the kid’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Billy Joe Cobra! Please to meet you, my adoring fan. Don’t feel you need to hold back on the adoring. I can take it. I’m even better than everything you’ve ever heard about me!”

The boy blinked. “Uh…hi?”

Billy looked him up and down, but he couldn’t recognize anything the kid was wearing. “Where’s your Cobra gear?” He dropped to his knees and pulled up the kid’s jeans. “Those aren’t my socks, are they?”

The boy jerked back. “No!”

“My underwear?” The boy gagged, so clearly not. “Maybe a guitar pick in your pocket?”

“I didn’t steal any of your stuff!” the boy hissed, retreating farther.

“Billy, what are you _doing_?” 

Billy turned, not realizing the others had followed him. He lengthened his arm and wrapped it around the new kid before the boy got the wrong idea and thought he needed to hide the truth from Spencer and the others. “Meeting my newest fan! Spencer, Rajeev, Shanilla, this is—” He broke off and looked expectantly at the boy.

The boy kept his mouth shut and glared.

“Seriously, stop goofing off,” Spencer said. “Every time you run off like that, I think Hoover got you.”

“How is meeting my adoring fans _goofing off_?”

Spencer raised his eyebrows. “Really? We’re doing this now? There’s no one here who can see you besides us.” He gestured towards Rajeev and Shanilla.

“Yeah, and my new fan,” Billy said, using his free hand to point to the boy who was currently sulking in his embrace and otherwise not acting like the adoring fan he should.

Spencer, Shanilla, and Rajeev exchanged glances. “Dude,” Rajeev said quietly, “you get hit by some of that alien dust? It’s just us.”

Billy looked at the boy.

The boy scowled back.

“You can’t…see him?”

Shanilla frowned. “Is there another ghost?”

The boy wasn’t offering up any information, but his feet were planted firmly on the ground, and what kind of ghost chose to stay landlocked when they could pull some sick moves in the air? Besides, he looked human. Although clearly if the others couldn’t see him, _something_ was up. 

Maybe a little ecto would fix it.

Sure, that hadn’t gone super great with Spencer by the end of the day, but most of it had been beyond chill. And, okay, so there were plenty of times that ecto had made things worse. But if the dude was already invisible to them, this wouldn’t make him more invisible, and—

“Just give us something of his if there is,” Spencer said, holding out his hand.

The boy ducked out of Billy’s grip at that, turning and running up the street. Back to Plan A, then. Ignoring the others, Billy spit a wad of ectoplasm into his hand, rolled it into a slightly more solid gel form, and conjured a bat.

He promptly dropped the bat in favour of flying to keep up with the ball, ready with some more ectoplasm just in case, while Spencer, Rajeev, and Shanilla ran after him. After _them_.

The boy ducked, and Billy’s ectoplasm sailed high and hit a parked car. The kid skidded to a halt and stared as the car began to glow blue. “Oh, crud,” he said.

Billy took advantage of his distraction to throw a glob of ectoplasm at the back of his head. Then, as the boy reached to wipe it off, Billy sneezed and covered him with _more_ ectoplasm. Just to be on the safe side.

The boy blinked as ectoplasm dripped off the end of his nose. His eyes changed from blue to a bright, glowing green. Not the standard reaction to ectoplasm, but, well, there wasn’t really a _standard_ reaction to it. “I fixed you!” Billy said. “Now they’ll be able to see you. Probably. I think.” He turned, catching sight of the incredulous faces of his friends, their disbelief visible even from half a block away. Grinning, he turned back to the boy. “Yeah, they can see you now! It’s all good!”

The boy pointed at the car, which had started revving its engine and flashing its lights at them. “You call that _all good_?”

“There might be a _teensy_ bit of room for improvement,” allowed Billy.

“Billy! What did you do?” Spencer gasped.

He was staring at the car, which had turned so that it was now facing all of them. He could hear its tires spinning and could smell burning rubber. Not that that mattered to him.

“I, uh, made my friend visible?” Billy said, pointing at the boy.

He glanced over, blinked, and looked again.

Correction: he was pointing at where the boy had been.

His ectoplasm lay in a puddle on the ground, but the boy was gone.

That was a new reaction to ecto. Well. Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t. “Um….”

“Just clean that up!” Spencer yelled, pushing Shanilla out of the way when she didn’t react fast enough to the oncoming car. “We need to fix this before everyone notices!”

Party poopers. Billy stuck his finger in the ectoplasm and sucked it back up. Rajeev was currently trying to lure the car away from the crowd below, but he wasn’t exactly the fastest runner in the group. That’s okay. Billy could play matador with the car until they got this sorted out. And _then_ he could find his new friend.

-|-

“I hate possessed technology,” Danny muttered. He’d phased down into the sewers to transform before shooting up the skies to figure out the best way to take out the newest threat without causing more damage than necessary. Ideally, he’d get help from Tucker or another technogeek, but Danny kinda doubted any of the ghost’s friends were technogeeks. The one boy, Spencer, had had a camera with him, but he just didn’t have a technogeek vibe. Maybe because he wasn’t joined at the hip with a PDA or phone or something that could hack into something else.

Danny sighed. He should’ve known something would go wrong even before his ghost sense went off. And he should’ve done something about the ghost the minute he’d realized he wasn’t the only one in town. But the ghost—Billy Joe Cobra, apparently, whoever that was—had seemed friendly enough. He hadn’t caused property damage (at least not that property damage), possessed people, or stolen things or anything like that.

Until he’d infused a car with his ectoplasm.

And…whatever he’d been trying to do to Danny. 

At least his ecto-snot wasn’t phase proof like the Fenton Foam. It hadn’t been as gunky, either; more like getting drooled on by Cujo than anything else. Really, Danny had been through worse.

Billy seemed a bit like Klemper, actually. Friendly and more destructive than he realized since his good intentions didn’t pan out the way he expected. Clearly. Except Billy was way more egotistical than Klemper, on par with Vlad, and acted more like Youngblood than Ember. Not that Ember didn’t cater to her fans, but she drew power from them. Danny wasn’t sure this guy did.

And then there was the whole fact that he could see Danny despite Danny being invisible, and no one besides the three kids had been able to see the other ghost.

Danny knew he hadn’t encountered every possible variety of ghost, but the differences were starting to give him a headache. Why couldn’t things be normal for once?

Oh, right, he was a Fenton. Normal was never going to happen. Not even the Fenton version of normal, which had all kinds of allowances for the supernatural.

Below him, Billy was waving around a red cape at the car and trying to lead it away from the crowd. Good. The three teens— _There_. Following at a cautious distance. One of them, the girl, broke off and headed into a building. The boys must have discussed something, since only one of them waited for her while the other peeled off to help Billy.

Okay. So. No Tucker. Possessed vehicle. And the ghost who had caused said possession was willing to fix it. That had to be good, right? He could go down there and try to drive the car (not that he knew how to drive), try to fry everything important with an ectoblast, or attempt to ice it in place. Or, y’know, pick it up and throw it in the ocean. Except the last one wasn’t likely to solve the problem in the long term, even though the other three should buy him enough time to deal with it.

Why did these things always happen when he didn’t have a thermos on him?

-|-

“Shanilla’s buying nails!” Spencer yelled as he chased after the car. “But that might not work. You need to get me inside!”

“No problemo, bro!” Billy said, dropping the cape he’d been using to taunt the car. It vanished before hitting the street. 

Spencer tried not to think about how many things could go wrong as Billy picked up him and transformed into a slingshot.

This was a terrible idea. Like, a really, really, _really_ bad one. But it was too late for regrets because Billy had released him and he was flying towards the car and flying had been a lot more fun when he’d been a ghost and—

The car was closing its windows so he couldn’t get in.

Spencer threw his arms up in front of him and expected the worse.

Instead, he felt someone catch him. And then he felt the hot leather of the car’s seat beneath him. He blinked. “Wha—?”

“Can you drive?”

Spencer turned his head and stared. There was a kid floating above the passenger seat. A ghost with white hair and green eyes and some kind of black jumpsuit thing and— Why could he see this guy if he didn’t have any of his stuff?

“Look,” the ghost said, “just…brake, okay? That’s the left pedal. Or middle if there’s three. I’m going to try to freeze the car.”

Spencer frowned. “That’ll just make it skid into something.”

“Not if I manage to get it stuck first.” The ghost boy hesitated. “Um, you might wanna buckle up, though. Just in case.”

Wordlessly, Spencer reached over and did up the seat belt. The ghost boy flew out of the car, or at least stopped moving with it and let it move through him. And then it started to get cold, colder than it ever did in Beverly Heights in the winter, and—

Spencer stomped on the brakes.

The wheels locked.

The car started to slide. 

Billy made a big show of trying to stop it, and the car passed right through him. 

Spencer was turning the wheel, but it did next to nothing to correct his course. Maybe because he didn’t dare take his foot off the brake. It might help, but it might also let the possessed car take control of itself again, and he was whipping around wildly enough as it was on the newly-formed ghost ice.

The car didn’t slow until it had done a full twelve-sixty, and then it lurched to a stop. When his head stopped spinning, Spencer realized Rajeev and Shalina were running towards them—Shanilla with a pack of nails and Rajeev with his video camera. He sucked in a steadying breath and tried to keep his lunch down.

“Bro! That was super chill! You’ve gotta show me how you did that.”

“Deal with the car you possessed first!”

Spencer raised his eyes and saw Billy talking to the new ghost. “I, uh, don’t know how,” Billy admitted.

The other boy rolled his eyes as the car shuddered beneath Spencer, trying to break free. “It’s your ectoplasm. Call it back to you. You can obviously contort your body. It’s…kinda like that. Probably more like shapeshifting. I don’t know. Just… _unpossess_ it.”

The ghost boy walked over to the car, muttering to himself, and shot some more ice out of his hands towards the wheels. Spencer shivered.

The ghost tapped on the window. “Are you okay?”

“I…guess?” He was alive. That counted. But he was shaking too much to undo the seat belt. “I just, uh….”

“Here.” The boy reached through the car door, grabbed his hand, and then pulled Spencer out. _Through the door._ And then he took him about ten feet away and held him steady on his feet and—

“Wh…why—? I mean, how—? You…you’re…but you’re a….”

“Ghost?” The boy was smirking. “Yeah. You can call me Phantom.”

Original.

Spencer turned his gaze to Billy, who was hovering above the car and poking its hood with one finger like he thought it might try to bite him.

“I’m, ah, a different kind of ghost,” Phantom said. “I don’t have the same powers as your friend. Ghosts are all different, but everyone can do the basics, like intangibility and flying, even the less advanced ghosts.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. If you don’t know about them by now, you don’t need to worry about them. There can’t be too many portals that open here anyway. The one I fell through was probably a fluke or a once-every-hundred-years thing. I mean, that _is_ just my luck.”

What? “Portal?”

“Spencer!” Shanilla and Rajeev were suddenly _there_ , hugging him, and the ghost boy had stepped away and left him sagging in his friends’ arms. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just….” He couldn’t see Phantom anymore. Had he dropped something and not realized it? Had Phantom pulled something out of his pocket? Maybe he’d given something to Spencer when he’d caught him and then taken it back?

“Who’s the new guy?” Shanilla whispered.

Spencer followed her gaze and saw Phantom again. “He calls himself Phantom.”

“Stage name?” Rajeev asked.

Spencer shook his head. “I don’t think he’s a dead celeb.” He was too…normal. “He said he came here through a portal.”

“What portal?” asked Shanilla.

“No clue.” 

Phantom had popped the hood of the car, and Billy was floating in the middle of it, neatly cut in half. Spencer had seen Billy pass through things before, no question. He was a ghost; that didn’t take any effort at all. He’d also seen Billy grasp normal objects before, and sometimes move them with his mind, and that seemed to take a bit more concentration on his part.

Phantom seemed more comfortable interacting with the physical world than not. He pointed at the glowing blue engine, and Billy tapped it. The car’s glow swelled for a moment before dimming to nothing, and the engine finally quieted and shut off completely. 

“Looks safe now,” Rajeev said, pulling them along towards the ghosts. 

“Spencer! You’re safe!” Billy wrapped his arms around him before stepping back and grabbing Phantom, pushing him forward. “You guys need to meet my new fan!”

“Your what?” Judging by Phantom’s expression, he hadn’t expected to hear that coming out of Billy’s mouth, either.

“The one you couldn’t see until I doused him in ectoplasm!” Billy enthused. “I mean, it reacted to him differently than it did you, Spencer, but it still gave him ghost powers!”

“Wait,” Phantom said, “you—?” He looked Spencer up and down. “You have ghost powers?”

“Not anymore. Just when his ecto was in my stomach.”

Phantom made a face. “You _ate_ his ectoplasm?”

“He threw it down my throat!”

“It was a good shot,” Billy agreed. “I don’t know when the rest of my ecto is going to come out of you, but we can have a lot of fun in the meantime!”

“Huh?”

“That’s why they can see you now,” Billy said. “Because they can see me, and you’re wearing my ectoplasm. Most of it, anyway. You’re picking this ghost thing up really fast. Even faster than my main bro over here did.”

Phantom was shaking his head. “No, I’m not, uh, I mean, this isn’t because of you. I mean, the car is, that’s on you, but me…isn’t.”

“Aw, c’mon, bro-man, you don’t need to be shy. I never forget a fan.”

Phantom stared at him. “They can see me because I’m not invisible.” 

“And you’re not invisible to them because of my ectoplasm.” 

“No,” Phantom said slowly, “this really has nothing to do with you.”

“I saw your eyes change colour and everything,” Billy said. “You just got a colour scheme makeover like Spencer did. Except his clothes didn’t change like yours did. And you got my rockin’ ghost powers. Including that ice thing, which is new. I didn’t know I could do that. How, exactly, did you do that?”

“I thought you said he wasn’t from around here,” Shanilla said, just loudly enough for Phantom and Billy to hear. “Or did I misunderstand what you meant by _portal_?”

“You didn’t. I don’t even know where here is.”

“It’s the home of the Cobra! Which you know because you’re a fan. I’m the reason you came, isn’t it? Go on, you can admit it. I know how my presence can draw—”

“I don’t even who you are!” Phantom burst out. 

Billy pouted. “You don’t need to pretend you’re not the same person for their sake. They’re my bros, man. They’re cool.”

Phantom groaned. He turned to Rajeev and pointed at Spencer’s video camera. “That’s not still on, is it?”

Rajeev handed it to Spencer, who checked it over just to be safe. “No, I never had a chance to turn it on.”

“Good. Keep it off.” Phantom sighed, and a bright ring of light appeared. It split apart and travelled over him in a flash, leaving behind a black-haired boy about their age.

Billy glanced at them. “You _can_ still see him now that the ecto wore off, right?”

“I don’t think it was your ecto,” Spencer whispered. “There’s nothing left behind.”

Billy frowned. “Are you sure?” He started picking through Phantom’s hair, and Phantom just looked resigned.

Shanilla was staring at him. “You do look a lot like Spencer. Not just the haircut, but your clothes—!”

“Of course a girl would notice that,” Rajeev muttered, and Shanilla elbowed him in the gut.

Phantom gave them an uneasy smile. “Yeah, someone else already mistook me for him. Look, this is hard to explain, but, uh, let’s just say I got ghost powers like Spencer did, except they haven’t gone away, and I can control them more now. And I, uh, was travelling, and I got ambushed, sorta, or maybe just attacked, I’m not sure, and then I got thrown through a portal and wound up here. Any chance you can tell me where I am?”

“Beverly Heights,” said Spencer.

“California,” Shanilla added.

“U. S. A.” That earned Rajeev another elbow, this time in the side, and he frowned. “What? He might not know!”

“He speaks English with the same accent, doesn’t he?” Shanilla hissed.

“Oh. Right.”

“It’s fine. I’m, ah, from Amity Park. It’s in Illinois. I just need to figure out how to get back there—”

“I’ll take you!” Billy volunteered. “And you can show me your ice trick and tell me how we can hook Spencer up with some awesome ghost powers and—”

“No, you do _not_ want to go through what I did to get these. _Trust me_. Especially when it may not work.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I won’t turn down the ride, though.”

Spencer stared at them. “If you’re actually going to do this, Phantom—”

“Danny.”

“Danny. Okay. But if this is going to happen, we need maps first. I’m not sure Billy can navigate—”

“That’s what Otto’s for,” Billy said, waving off Spencer’s concerns. 

“You _broke_ your auto-pilot!”

“Pfft, that was in my jet, not my good plane. It’ll be fine.”

“It was barely fine last time!”

“Wait, you have a _jet_? _And_ a plane?” 

“We didn’t have my birthday party on your good plane?” Rajeev looked between him and Billy. “You threw my party on your bad plane?”

“I threw your party on Billy’s jet,” Spencer corrected, “because he didn’t tell me he had a good plane, which is just as well because we basically destroyed the jet.”

“Mmm. Fair enough. So just a small, private party to break in this new plane, right?”

“It’s the good plane, not the new plane,” Billy snapped, “and I am the only one allowed to throw parties on it.”

“We don’t need to throw any parties!” Danny interjected. “I just need to get home. Sooner rather than later. My parents are going to freak. Not to mention my sister and my friends. My cell phone got iced up in the Far Frozen, and I don’t want to try turning it back on yet.”

“What’s the—?”

“It’s a long story. Um, how long do you think it’ll take to get there?”

“The usual flight time is probably about four hours,” Shanilla said. 

“And the Cobra’s gonna get you there in half that time! Less! C’mon, ghost-bro, let’s get you at cruising altitude.”

Danny shot a wild look at Spencer. “Do I _want_ to get there in less than half that time?”

“Probably not. But we’ll come with you in case something goes wrong.” At the doubtful look on Danny’s face, Spencer added, “It’s summer. No one’s going to miss us. And then maybe we can hear your story? We’ll tell you ours.”

“And you can show me your ice trick!”

“ _Not_ while we’re in the air!” Shanilla shrieked. “One near death experience from flying is enough!”

Billy laughed and grabbed them, whisking them towards the airport before anyone could say anything else.

It was going to be an interesting flight.


End file.
